


Sea Level

by Curator



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode: s05e14 Bliss, F/M, Post-Episode: s07e25 Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager), Sailing, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, references episode, the nature of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23744059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: After his divorce, Tom Paris embarks on a solo sailing trip. Kathryn Janeway finds him.
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway/Tom Paris
Comments: 41
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

Take six months, Starfleet tells them all. Find your footing back in the Alpha Quadrant, then we’ll talk. 

She visits her mother in Bloomington, hikes the Grand Canyon to feel closer to her father, reads about scientific discoveries in a Starfleet temporary apartment with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Harry comms once a week.

He tells her how paternalism clashed with indecision to send Chakotay to his homeworld and Seven into a long-range transit shuttle pointed in the other direction. 

He shares a lengthy story about seeking wisdom from Bajoran Prophets, an upsetting experience with the Orb of Contemplation, and Tal Celes and Billy Telfer agreeing to go back to being just friends. 

But, for the divorce, Harry doesn’t give details. He just says B’Elanna and Miral left for Qo'noS and Tom set sail for the southern part of the Pacific Ocean.

The call ends and she stares at the darkened screen. 

Nobody owes her anything, she decides. If Tom wants to move on … like Chakotay … like Seven … like B’Elanna, even … then perhaps that’s the natural order of things. All those years of forced togetherness could naturally lead to entropy, a sort of centrifugal force pulling them all apart once they had the chance to rediscover themselves at home. 

She wonders when it will happen for her. 

Rediscovery.

She considers comming Tuvok, asking for Vulcan wisdom and insight.

Instead, she attaches a commbadge to her t-shirt, walks to a transporter station, and has the attendant locate a sailboat with one human lifesign in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean.

When she materializes on the open-air deck, his blond head snaps toward her. She’s a few meters away and he squints in the sun and half-steps backward, blinded and confused.

“It’s me, Tom,” she says through a too-tight throat. “Can we talk?”

He’s standing at the wheel, a large, old-fashioned beauty of polished wood and brass. There’s a computer panel to the side and he taps it, the fair hairs on his arm shining in the sun. She sees the word “autopilot” flash on a small screen and then he’s next to her, smelling of sea air and white-crested waves. 

“What do you want to talk about?” 

She wants to talk about her mother and sister who enjoy a closeness forged by years of believing they were the only two survivors of a four-person family.

She wants to talk about the scars of the Dominion War on the psyche of the Federation. 

She wants to talk about how her crew is falling apart, falling away, falling, falling, falling.

But it’s too much and too little and too grand and too selfish, so she doesn’t say anything. She just stands there and he does, too, wind whipping their hair and watering their eyes as the deck underfoot bobs with the waves.

A massive, white sail shifts above their heads, plunging them into shadow, breaking some sort of trance. 

“You need sun protectant,” he says. “Go below deck. There’s a canister in the head.”

He points and she sees the small door. Thinks of Alice in Wonderland as she crouches and steps through.

Down a few stairs, a cabin opens in front of her, tiny, but window-lined, airy, and bright.

The coverlet on a double bed is pulled to the pillows, regulation-perfect.

A table sticks out from a wall. The smooth metal holds a computer terminal and a bottle of whiskey with a red seal over the cork. Next to the bottle is a worn copy of _The Collected Works of Jules Verne: 36 Novels and Short Stories_.

She picks up the book, the leather soft under her fingers. There are two metal chairs at the table, utilitarian but with backs and arms. She sits in one, opens the book, and begins to read of a great monster that haunted the seas, of a ship far from home that should have been destroyed by a blow no one saw coming, of the people who believed the stories and those who did not.

The sailboat’s gentle rocking brings a heaviness to her arms … her chest … her eyelids.

When she wakes up, the coverlet from the bed is tucked behind her shoulders and cascades to her feet. A pillow is wedged between her ear and her shoulder. The book is on the table, a slim bookmark noting the few pages she read before dozing.

She replaces the pillow, returns the coverlet to regulation-perfect, and uses the head. Through the windows, she sees purple sky so she doesn’t bother with sun protectant to climb back above deck.

For a second, she thinks she’s alone. 

But he’s there, flat on his back at the bow, a half-eaten ration pack next to him, the open sea beyond his bare feet. 

She sits next to him. 

“Thanks,” she says. 

“No problem.” He holds up what’s left of the ration pack. “Hungry?”

Their fingers brush as she takes the pack. 

“Why didn’t you replicate something?”

He shrugs. “The only replicator onboard is a few centimeters from where you were sleeping.”

She nods, takes a bite.

Rations taste better than she remembered.

She finishes the pack and lies down next to him, hammocking her head in her hands the way he does, elbows out. 

Purple streaks across the sky darken into blackness, stars emerging with the lights of ships in orbit.

The sail flaps, the waves splash, and the deck shifts her nearer to the stars … then away … nearer … then away.

She lets her eyes close. 

When she opens them, she’s in the bed. The coverlet is over her shoulders and the mattress is soft. He’s next to her, his breathing regular and deep, and she wonders if the sailboat’s gentle rocking is a lullaby for him, too. 

There’s a contentment in her belly that she hasn’t felt in a long time.

Her eyes drift closed again.

Days and nights flow together. He might ask if she’s hungry. She might inquire if he wants a cup of coffee. When the sun protectant runs low, he replicates another canister. When she stands by his shoulder at the wheel, he explains the mechanical and computer interfaces. They take turns reading the Jules Verne book and they watch sunsets on their backs, side by side. 

It’s easy, quiet, calm.

Then one night, late, lightning splits the sky and the sailboat pitches and rolls.

Under the coverlet, her heart hammers. 

He’s asleep, she’s sure of it.

Thunder and lightning crash together and her molars do the same. She can’t see stars, just clouds lit by electricity. Rain pounds the deck above her head.

She hates storms. On land, in space, and now at sea.

Breaths puff from her nostrils in hard bursts.

Under the coverlet, he shifts onto his stomach. A small sound escapes, a sleep-murmur that’s almost a hum, and his arm bends at the elbow to hug her waist, warm and secure.

The storm doesn’t change, but her breathing softens. Her eyes drift closed. 

In the calm sea of morning, she awakens first, his arm comfortable across her waist, and she breaks their unspoken code of silence about the past.

“Tom.” The arm stiffens but doesn’t recoil. “When that bioplasmic creature, the telepathic pitcher plant, made us think we were going home … what did you see?”

His eyes don’t open. His words are sleep-lazy and slurred. “Piloting job. Test flight center on Earth. Experimental ships.”

She looks at the ceiling. “I saw my fiancé. Mark. I hallucinated that he had waited for me and was ready to see me off again once Starfleet refit _Voyager_ and let me captain her in the Alpha Quadrant.”

They both know _Voyager_ was decommissioned and will never fly again.

“I was aware by then that he had gotten over me, married someone else.” Her voice cracks. “I just had this idea in my head of home.”

“Yeah.” His other hand rubs his eyes. “Same here.”

She rolls toward him, just the thin material of her replicated nightgown and his t-shirt and boxer shorts between them.

He rolls, too, his arm dipping behind her, his elbow resting on her hip.

“I thought home would be a new start, no one reminding me of my faults or downplaying my talents. Turns out, I’d traded a father who would call me a failure for a wife who would call me an idiot.”

Her thumb strokes his cheek, rough with stubble. 

“You’re neither of those things.”

“And you’re not a woman any guy would ever get over.”

His hand shifts upward, warm along her back until he’s tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. A fingertip brushes her lips. 

“Okay?” he says.

She nods.

His kiss is tentative, light. 

She wants to melt into it, into him, into this life of the motion of the waves and the arc of the sun and sleeping next to someone who is kind to her.

But she pulls away.

If he had asked why, if hurt had flashed across his features, if he had demanded anything of her at all, she might have grabbed her commbadge and left.

But he pats her back, stumbles toward the replicator, orders a cup of coffee, and hands her the mug before disappearing into the head. 

She drinks, the dark liquid burning all the way down.


	2. Chapter 2

She wonders if she imagined it, their kiss. 

Lips couldn’t possibly nudge that softly against her own. 

A thumb couldn’t possibly have traced her cheekbone as if the curve itself was a mystery and a prize.

The only way she knows the whole storm wasn’t a dream is because he emerges from the head and scoops the book, computer terminal, and bottle of whiskey from the floor and places them back on the table. It takes another day to find her commbadge in the thick carpeting.

They resume looking to the ocean and the stars, taking turns paging through an ancient book, and receiving separate weekly comms from Harry.

“Buddy,” Harry says, the computer terminal swiveled toward the stern. “Just let me know if you get lonely, okay? How many nights did you spend on my couch on _Voyager_? You can come to my parents’ house or I can go to you. Don’t be an island, all right?”

“Thanks, Harry,” he says. “You’re a good friend.”

“Captain,” Harry says, the computer terminal swiveled toward the bow. “Icheb heard from Seven and she’s all right. Naomi got a message from her, too. We think Seven might be somewhere near the Beta Quadrant, but she could be scrambling her comm signature. Do you want me to keep checking?”

“Thank you, Harry, but no,” she says. “People are entitled to their privacy.”

One night, the first stars light the purplish blackness when he suggests they open the whiskey.

“You weren’t saving it for a special occasion?”

“Nah.”

She sits cross-legged on the open-air deck and he brings the bottle and two glass tumblers. 

He pours the first round. 

She wants to get drunk, to get stupid and handsy and to kiss _him_ this time and to touch him, every jut and curve and plane. She wants him to grasp her waist, her back, her breasts, and for things to start out gently and then become rough and breathless. 

She can taste the oak in the whiskey and the smooth rye.

He pours another round.

“You should find that guy,” he says. “Your ex-fiancé. Tell him how you feel.”

The glass in her hand goes cold. 

“You and I both grew up with fathers who made us feel like love had to be earned with good grades and academy acceptance letters.” His glass tips and amber liquid disappears between his lips. “Maybe that’s why people like us make love so damn complicated.”

There’s an ache in her chest. 

“You still love B’Elanna,” she says.

His head shakes. “The opposite. I wanted to earn her love, but I didn’t know what to do with it once I got it.”

She thinks of Mark, of partings and reunions, of subspace calls and the way they would tease each other. 

Wasn’t that love?

They finish the bottle, but she doesn’t feel drunk, just tired. 

A few days later, he’s at the wheel and she’s down below when her commbadge chirps. A lieutenant who talks too fast for her to catch his name asks if she prefers a view of the city or of Starfleet Academy.

“I’m sorry, what?” she says.

“For your office,” the lieutenant replies. 

She logs in to the computer terminal, sees a message from Admiral Patterson apologizing for writing before her six months of leave are over, but that he couldn’t wait to tell her how proud he is of her for her promotion.

She had thought … another ship … it wouldn’t be _Voyager_ , but … 

She tells the lieutenant she will comm him later.

The commbadge is in her hand. 

She could climb up to the deck and throw it, watch the metal catch the sun until it fell into the ocean with a satisfying _plop_.

She could decline the promotion. People do it all the time. 

She could …

Everything becomes blurry.

The heels of her hands press to her closed eyes and she wills herself to be strong, to do what she’s told.

The little door opens, then arms are around her and a hand is cupping the back of her head.

“How did you know?” she whispers. 

“I didn’t,” he says. “Came down for a glass of water and saw you standing here like your world was ending.”

And that’s exactly what it is. 

The world of competition, of goals for the next rank, of missions, of exploration. 

It’s ending. 

Because she’s not going to decline the promotion. She’s not going to be like Jean-Luc Picard, always pining for the _Stargazer_ even when Starfleet gives him better and better ships to captain. 

She’s going to do what she’s always done and find her way through unfamiliarity toward some sort of satisfaction.

“I don’t love Mark.”

She hadn’t planned to say that.

She doesn’t know if it’s this sensation of being cracked in half that has the truth leaking out of her, but she decides to let it happen. 

“I did love him. Years ago. But I was lonely when we were apart and I don’t want to be lonely anymore.”

The arms around her fall away and she sways at the loss of contact.

“Not wanting to be lonely isn’t love.”

There’s a press of lips to her forehead, then the little door closes again and he’s gone.

This time, when the heels of her hands press to her closed eyes, the commbadge digs into her palm.

She flings it against the wall and it bounces off and lands in the carpet. 

She’ll find it later. The sunlight up on deck blinds her for a few seconds, then she sees him at the wheel. 

She wants to shout at him, to say she’s not good at this anymore, that she’s out of practice, that maybe she was never good at this and that’s why she needs him. Because he understands her and always has. Because he insists on honesty and the kind of self-examination that she usually runs from but now realizes is long overdue. And she can’t continue this quiet between them, as easy as it may seem, because she needs to know what he’s thinking and what his plans are and whether he wants to be with her once this is over, this interlude for two people who have always lived their lives at warp and now find themselves propelled by wind and waves. 

She taps his shoulder and he turns.

“Please,” she says. 

What she means is, please be patient with me.

Please let me find a way to tell you I love you but, until then, please know that I do.

Please stay with me because you’re right that not wanting to be lonely isn’t love, yet the idea of being away from you is too painful to bear. 

And he understands, she can tell he does, and he says, “Okay,” and his arm hugs her waist and her head finds his chest and she can feel his heartbeat on her temple and they’re behind the wheel together and it’s good.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Qo’nos Affair](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29452797) by [JanewaysEngineer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanewaysEngineer/pseuds/JanewaysEngineer)




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